Affirmative Action

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order

Trump and the DEI Counter-Revolution

Civil-rights law made the DEI world; civil-rights reform can unmake it.

8 Feb 2025 · 44 min read

Are Board Gender Quotas a Good Idea?

The more we try to limit freedom in the interests of desirable social change, the less effective we will be in the long run, and the greater the number of additional problems we create.

Silvia G. Poratelli

9 Dec 2024 · 8 min read

The UC’s Corner-Office Revolutionary

In a new memoir, a former academic administrator explains how she led the ideological campaign to enshrine DEI as a ‘core mission’ at the University of California.

Steven Brint

9 Apr 2024 · 24 min read

Rediscovering the Meaning of Diversity: Lessons from Generation X

Gen X is young enough to take civil rights and integration for granted—but old enough to appreciate how much progress America has made

Monica Harris

28 Feb 2024 · 11 min read

The Disaster Artist

Was Liz Truss Britain’s first affirmative-action prime minister?

Laurie Wastell

7 Oct 2023 · 10 min read

The Peculiar Silence in the Students for Fair Admissions Decision

Are racial preferences in university admissions really dead?

Ethan Blevins

16 Aug 2023 · 7 min read

At Canadian Universities, Race and Gender Quotas Have Become a Way of Life

In their recruitment efforts, some schools now flat-out exclude white males who don’t self-identify as disabled or LGBT.

Margaret Wente

2 Dec 2022 · 11 min read

It May Not Be Possible to Achieve Racial Equity in American Scientific Research

“NIH Stands Against Structural Racism in Biomedical Research.” This was the title of a statement released on March 1st, 2021, by Francis S. Collins, who was then the Director of the National Institutes of Health. The statement continued: As a science agency, we know that bringing diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and

Robert J. Morris

11 Mar 2022 · 10 min read

The Pretext of Diversity in American Universities

A surfeit of reparations advocates (including Ta-Nehisi Coates) are openly disdainful of the diversity rationale—just not so disdainful as to actually oppose diversity initiatives.

Kenneth R. Pike

6 Jan 2022 · 12 min read

Fund Science on the Basis of Scientists‘ Work, Not Their Identity

The available numbers don’t tell us if there was any evidence of systemic bias in the underlying grant criteria, or in the evaluation of applications against those criteria.

Lawrence M. Krauss

17 Dec 2021 · 6 min read

Affirmative Action Conundrums

Kendi’s defensive salvo raises broader issues about affirmative action.

Oliver Traldi

12 Nov 2021 · 11 min read

Toxic Masculinity and Gender Equity in the Australian Defence Force

If the intentions of senior military leadership are not so self-aggrandising and opportunistic, then they are at least ignorant of the underlying dynamics and complexities of gender equality in an environment as unique as the military.

Luke J. Graham

1 Aug 2018 · 8 min read

Unmaking Affirmative Action

The color question has changed in America and this has implications for the logic of affirmative action.

Stephen T. Asma

27 Jul 2018 · 11 min read